Vasco da Gama

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524), Portuguese explorer and navigator, who was the first European to reach India by the sea route around Africa, so completing the quest begun 80 years before by Henry the Navigator.

Da Gama was born in Sines, Alemtejo (now Baixo Alentejo). In his youth he participated in the wars against Castile. Commissioned by Emanuel, King of Portugal, to reach India by sea, da Gama sailed from Lisbon with four ships on July 8, 1497. In November he rounded the Cape of Good Hope (first rounded in 1488 by the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias) having been out of sight of land for over 13 weeks, probably the longest ocean-going voyage at that time. Natal was sighted and named at Christmas 1497. By the time he reached the port of Moçambique, he was running into Muslim opposition but at Malindi on the coast of what is now Kenya, he managed to secure a pilot to guide him eastward. Da Gama reached Kozhikode (Calicut) on the Malabar Coast of India on May 20, 1498. He found that due to the hostility of Muslim merchants, and the poor quality of the goods he had brought with him to trade, he was unable to sign a trade agreement with the ruler, known as the Zamorin. With the winds against them the voyage back to Malindi took three months and many of his crew died of scurvy before they returned to Portugal in September 1499. He had navigated some 24,000 miles and demonstrated that the Indian Ocean was not the landlocked sea Europeans had thought it to be since the time of the ancient Greeks. Da Gama was rewarded with the title of Admiral of the Indian Ocean.

To follow up the discoveries of da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral was immediately dispatched to India, and he established a Portuguese trading post in Calicut. When news reached Portugal that those stationed in Calicut by Cabral had been massacred, da Gama was sent in February 1502 to avenge that act. On the way to India he attacked a number of Muslim ships including the Meri, killing more than 400 men, women, and children returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca. Arriving in Calicut, da Gama quickly subdued the inhabitants, impressing them with the superior fire-power of the Portuguese and forcing the Zamorin to make peace. Bearing a rich cargo of spice, he left India and sailed for Portugal establishing Portuguese colonies at Moçambique and Sofala (present-day Beira) on the coast of what is now Mozambique, and arriving in Portugal in September 1503. Richly rewarded by the Portuguese Crown for breaking the Muslim monopoly on trade with India, he settled down to profit from his ventures. For the next 20 years he saw no active sea duty. He received the title of Count of Vidigueira in 1519, and in 1524 he was named viceroy and sent to India to correct the mounting corruption among the Portuguese authorities there. Da Gama reached India in the autumn of 1524, but he died in Cochin only three months after his arrival.

By pioneering the Portuguese sea route to India, da Gama established Lisbon as the centre of the European spice trade, and laid the foundation for the Portuguese Empire which controlled trade with the ports of eastern Africa, south-west India, and Indonesia.